>>>     Then you get those socialist hell-holes with fully socialised
>>>     health-care, but they're boring so Travellers don't go to those.
>>
>> Chuckle.

Alex Goodwin:
> More likely in areas with a strong Vilani influence - universal
> healthcare being a comparatively cheap investment in keeping your
> workforce going.

Yes, that makes sense.

Me:>> Senolytics aka anagathics? (James Blish, I think.)

Alex Goodwin:
> Not quite as I understand them - anagathics directly _prevent_ (some
> fraction of) aging damage accumulating ahead of time, while senolytics
> _repair_ (some fraction of) existing aging damage.  Any prevention from
> senolytics is indirect.  That may be a distinction without a practical
> difference.

Fair enough. I think you're right - pre- vs post-care. Probably both are in use.

> And how do either of those two classes of drugs differently affect
> Vilani/Daryens/etc compared to baseline Terrans?

I think that's a GM call. I'm happy to believe that they are different, without delving into exactly *how* they are different. Perhaps they are multiply different - Vilani planet X needs treatment A while Vilani planet Y needs treatment B and Solomani planet C needs treatment Z. Except that the planets have interbred over time so there are no simple solutions. Then again, following on from an earlier thought on this thread, perhaps an individual's genetic analysis (and a large database) would come up with the appropriate treatment?

Alex Goodwin:
> As you seem to be more comfortable with transsophont Traveller than I am
> - what happens IYTU if, thanks to broad administration of
> senolytic/anagathic drugs, baseline life expectancy in golden age
> exceeds what Vilani bloodlines renowned for longevity managed in the ISW
> (iirc, 300 years or so)?

My off-the-cuff response is that I don't use anti-aging drugs IMTU. I run a post-Collapse TU and there was a significant population which tried to simply outlast the Bad Times by going into cold-sleep for a century or two. When they woke up (or were re-awakened) they were universally hated for being cowards and leaving the rest of the population to tough it out. They are called Relics. So the very old - especially those who look young but act old (whatever that means) - tend to cause nasty reactions among the populace. This has spilled over into a society and a widespread avoidance of "extreme" age-avoidance mechanisms. Perhaps in a century or two things will have swung the other way. Who knows? Of course this is a GM call.

Alex Goodwin:> Don't underestimate founder effects.  Start with an initial group that
> (due to chance) aged slower to begin with, apply the ol' Yaskoydray
> Yoink, then bung them in an early evolutionary environment where
> longevity (somehow) and genetic robustness (again somehow - Vland is not
> the deathworld Terra is, let alone STRAYA) got selected for.  If the old
> bastard mucked with them on top of that, how could we tell at 300,000
> years remove?
>
> This didn't go as far as speciation, as GT:ISW implies (via Terrani
> hybrids being interfertile with both parent strains and each other) that
> Vilani are H. sapiens sapiens.

I agree on both counts. At what point does Humaniti get smart enough to realize that the Vilani might have been messed around with genetically? Turning this one around, perhaps the Terran population was *also* messed around with? This way lies madness :-)

Alex Goodwin:
> I suspect we're thinking at different scales.  How far is _backward_,
> given the medical knowledge would be moderately easy to import?

Excellent point. I'd add "and deploy over the planet" (hooking up with the 'we are rich and can afford it' sub-thread further on). I can't answer your question. Pick some convenient TL and go for it, bearing in mind that J random hospital on planet Foo might be +2/-2 TLs from that.

> I also like to build out the background details of a setting so I can
> figure out the stuff happening in the background, which gives not a toss
> about the PCs (unless they cook off a nuclear device, or the like - waay
> off topic, but have you tried a ground forces game where PCs are generals?).

I have. There is surprisingly little personal violence :-) You have to have the right set of players for it, too. Most players hate it - they are too much (for my taste) into hack'n'slash, and not enough into the story-telling (which is what I enjoy, so this becomes a challenge). As a GM, your choices seem to be to retire the high-level players into executive roles, or promote the Big Bads until the campaign is just hack'n'slash with bigger hacks and slashes. It's a tricky balance, and one which I fear I have not mastered.

Jonathan